Sarajevo’s “War Without End”

[The following is reprinted with permission from the Institute for War & Peace Reporting website. My thanks for continuing to give me the opportunity to share articles.]

Former BBC correspondent recounts life in city targeted by shelling and sniper fire.
By Rachel Irwin - International Justice - ICTY
TRI Issue 674, 17 Dec 10

A former BBC journalist told the trial of Radovan Karadzic this week that civilians in the besieged city of Sarajevo were deliberately targeted by snipers and subjected to “appalling” conditions.

“I would say that [civilians] were subjected to three and-a-half years of an appalling ordeal,” said prosecution witness Martin Bell, who covered the wars in Croatia and Bosnia from 1991 to 1995.

“It was not just a question of being caught in the crossfire, there was deliberate targeting also, on both sides of the lines.”

Karadzic was the president of Bosnia’s self-declared Republika Srpska, RS, from 1992 to 1996. He allegedly planned and oversaw the 44-month siege of Sarajevo that left nearly 12,000 people dead, and his army is accused of deliberately sniping and shelling the city’s civilian population in order to “spread terror” among them.

The indictment - which lists 11 counts in total - alleges that Karadzic was responsible for crimes of genocide, persecution, extermination, murder and forcible transfer which “contributed to achieving the objective of the permanent removal of Bosnian Muslims and Bosnian Croats from Bosnian Serb-claimed territory”. In July 2008, he was arrested in Belgrade after 13 years on the run.

In one of Bell’s television reports screened during the hearing, Sarajevo civilians run past what are said to be Bosnian Serb sniper positions in order to reach the only available water supply, located in a nearby basement. One man who was making the journey is shot in the leg as he turns a corner. He collapses and appears to go into shock.

“He was shot for a bucket of water,” Bell narrates in the report.

“Was this a situation where someone was caught in the cross-fire?” prosecuting lawyer Carolyn Edgerton asked.

“No, the man who was wounded had clearly been targeted,” Bell answered. “…After all these years I still find the report difficult to watch… the images themselves called for international intervention.

“In terms of the situation for civilians in the city, do you find this report of yours to be an accurate depiction?” Edgerton asked.

“Yes, I am confident this is accurate and truthful,” Bell said. “You can see the woman wincing when she hears the sniper fire… I think this report conveys an accurate picture of suffering inflicted on innocent people.”

Edgerton then asked him to describe the “psychological effect” that the constant shelling and sniping had on civilians.

“This is anecdotal, but I have never seen such anxiety etched on everybody’s faces - they lost weight and some looked almost grey with fear,” Bell answered. “We [journalists] had it easy, we came in and out… [Civilians] were there all the time with no means to escape. They were trapped in a war without end.”

Bell also described his experiences reporting from other Bosnian cities and towns, including Zvornik, which borders neighbouring Serbia.

In one report from early April 1992, Bell says that “95 per cent” of Zvornik’s Serb population had already fled and that war was “unstoppable”. After the Serbs fled, he reported that the town was taken over by “Serbian irregulars” led by a man named Zeljko Raznatovic, otherwise known as Arkan, who is interviewed briefly in the report.

Arkan led a group known as Arkan’s Tigers, said to be one of the most notorious paramilitary groups during that time. He was assassinated in Belgrade in 2000 before he could be arrested and transferred to The Hague, but he is named in Karadzic’s indictment as one of the alleged members of a joint criminal enterprise that includes the accused and various other members of the Bosnian Serb and Serbian leadership.

On April 10, 1992, Bell filed a report where lifeless bodies are seen being dragged on the ground. He describes Arkan’s forces as “mopping up the last of Muslim resistance” and “making greater Serbia happen”.
The report also captures on film the flight of an estimated 20,000 Bosniak civilians from the area. One woman tells the camera, “We are unarmed and they are firing at us.” Another man begs the world to help them. Groups of women, children and babies huddle together, and many of them are crying. Bell narrates that “the ethnic map of Bosnia is being redrawn”.

“When you said that the ethnic map of Bosnia is being redrawn, what did you mean?” Edgerton asked.

“This was the first visual evidence of what came to be known as ethnic cleansing,” Bell answered. “This report did have considerable impact and actually, your honours, it still does.”

Bell said that earlier this year, he received a letter from a man, now living in Canada, who was one of the babies captured in the video footage that day.

“He was grateful for the existence of this report because it was the only evidence of what happened at this time,” Bell said.

After the events in Zvornik, Bell said he wanted “Dr Karadzic to know what was going on”.

“[The] fighting, as far as we know, was done by Arkan’s [paramilitaries], which was not under control of the accused,” Bell said.

“How do you know that?” Edgerton asked.

“I knew Arkan,” Bell responded. “Arkan took orders from nobody. He had a very tense relationship even with the [Yugoslav army]. Having said that, he couldn’t get across the border [from Serbia] without collusion somewhere… [but] I knew him really well, I knew his mind, Ms Edgerton.”

When it was Karadzic’s turn to cross-examine the witness, he asked if Bell agreed that until May 20, 1992, when the Yugoslav Army, JNA, pulled out of Bosnia, Karadzic had “no opportunities to gain insight or control on the developments on the ground” including the events in Zvornik.

“We were hardly able to find out what was going on, much less control it,” Karadzic contended.

“That was the very early days [of war],” Bell responded. “There was no Bosnian Serb army in existence at that time.”

He added that “anarchy” had reigned during “those early days”.

Karadzic also questioned Bell on his interpretation of the Zvornik takeover.

“You said the Serbs first fled Zvornik,” Karadzic said.
“First, the Serbs fled Zvornik across the river, and then I’m assuming that some of them returned, and then the fighting forces were commander Arkan’s,” Bell responded.

“Did you receive any information as to who Serbs were fleeing from?” Karadzic asked, adding that there were “numerous Muslim paramilitary formations” in the area.

“That’s your information, not mine,” Karadzic said. “Two or three days before the fighting in Zvornik, Serbs had fled and obviously they fled in fear.”

Karadzic contended that Bosniak civilians “didn’t even wait for Serbs to arrive, so they are refugees rather than displaced persons”.

“They either left before the Serbs came, or they left following instructions,” he continued. “In any case, they were not driven out, they were refugees.”
Bell responded that in his television report “you actually heard guns firing in background as [the Bosniak civilians] crouched there.

“I don’t doubt that some left before the Arkan attack, but others left because of it,” Bell said.

When Edgerton had the opportunity to ask some follow-up questions, she challenged Karadzic’s assertion that up until the JNA pullout on May 20, 1992 there was no “centralised control or command”.

She produced several transcripts from Bosnian Serb assembly sessions which suggested that Karadzic had organised crisis staffs, executive boards and reserve units in various municipalities by late March 1992.

Bell said that it would be “hard to overstate the degree of chaos and anarchy in early weeks of April 1992”.
“What I saw on the ground were bands of armed men on both sides, [and] very often they appeared to be undisciplined [and] improvised,” he said.

“But I will accept that by early May there was a degree of command and control in some areas,” Bell continued. “Armies are not formed and organised overnight, not even in times of war.”

Also testifying this week was Almir Begic, who said his father was killed in the first massacre at Sarajevo’s Markale market on February 5, 1994. His father wore a prosthetic leg, and Begic testified that it was the same prosthetic leg that appears in video footage of the massacre, already shown several times during the trial.

Karadzic contends that the massacre was staged by the Bosnian government and that the prosthetic leg was planted at the scene.

The trial is scheduled to resume the week of January 10, after the court’s winter recess.

Rachel Irwin is an IWPR reporter in The Hague.

"In Harm's Way" by Martin Bell [22]

Epilogue

This brief conclusion to the book finds Bell realizing that he needs to leave Bosnia--not only is the war over, but he finds himself feeling genuine anger at the needless waste of it all. Needless, because the Western world could have and should have intervened much earlier to save thousands of lives and the chance for multiethnic Bosnia to survive. Bell believed that the international community bore some responsibility for the massive war crimes in Bosnia--unlike many observers, he never forgot that Srebrenica was a UN "safe area" nor does shy away from confronting the sad reality that in the end the Dutch UN contingent was concerned with nothing more than its own survival.

And so he left, and the book ends rather abruptly--but then again, even the second edition was published in 1995, while the peace was still new and untested. This is in many ways a raw book, informed by immediate reactions and fresh, direct impressions. Some of Bell's judgments could be fairly questioned, but it is crucial to note that he gets the big questions right. Precisely because this is not an impassioned work of partisan advocacy, "In Harm's Way" is ultimately a quite effective argument in favor of humanitarian intervention by the international community. It is also a thoughtful meditation on the role of the media in wartime and on the function of the mass media in the post-Cold War world. And it is many other things as well.

I highly recommend this book; it won't tell the average reader of this blog much about Bosnia that he or she doesn't already know, but Bell's point of view is worth knowing.

*************

It is fitting to finish this book review just a few hours before I finish the first decade of the 21st Century. I would reflect at more length on the decade and on where Bosnia and the cause of humanitarian intervention and internationalism--but my wife informs me that it is time to get ready for our New Year's Eve outing! So I wish all my readers a happy 2010, and I look forward to continuing our ongoing dialogue in the new year. Best wishes to all.

"In Harm's Way" by Martin Bell [21]

Chapter 23: Fainthearts Confounded

The final chapter of the book finds Bell observing and commenting on the endgame of the Bosnian war. Bell was called away from the field to provide his expertise in studio back home in Britain, where he confronted the difficulties of trying to distill the war and its denouement in short soundbites for a public which was suddenly paying attention again.

As for the war--Bell recognized the key to why the war came to a sudden end; as he reiterates over and over in this book, force works. A muscular use of force by NATO forced the Serbs to the negotiating table, and a determined show of arms by IFOR immediately following the Dayton treaty ensured that both sides kept the peace and respected the peacekeepers. There would be no more ceasefire violations, no more terrorist kidnappings of hapless UN personnel to act as human shields.

Even though it was disturbingly clear that all Dayton had accomplished was essentially to force the Bosnian Serbs to accept their own plan for de facto ethnic partition (albeit with far less territory than they would have liked), the main lesson Bell learned was this--it could have been done sooner, meaning that more lives could have been saved, less injustice would have been enshrined at Dayton, and something of the old multiethnic Bosnia might have been saved.

A lot of trouble, death, and destruction could have been avoided, and our Western values much less betrayed, had the world known in advance what Bell saw in hindsight.

"In Harm's Way" by Martin Bell [19]

Chapter 21: Showdown

This chapter is a brisk and exasperated account of events in Bosnia from late May up until around the fall of Srebrenica as witnessed by Bell and other members of the media, who were unable to witness much of what was happening first hand.

Mostly, this is account of the final, craven capitualation of the United Nations to the Bosnian Serb forces and of the continued increase in the volume and ferocity of the armed combat between those forces and the Bosnian government. It was clear to Bell at the time, as it is to all reasonable students of the war in hindsight, that the UN was a spent force at best by this point. Bell correctly notes that its mission had become an absurd anomoly, a protection force which seemed only interested in protecting itself. The UN was by now occupied with little other than negotiating for its own hostages and urging NATO to leave so that the Serbs would no longer threaten them. The fall of Srebrenica was the final, humiliating proof that it was well past time for the United Nations to leave.

"In Harm's Way" by Martin Bell [17]

Chapter 19: Days of Foreboding

An interesting and entertaining account of the first half of th final year of the war, beginning with Jimmy Carter's bogus cease-fire in the winter of 1994, and ending in spring, just as Operation Flash went into effect and helped unleash the chain of events which led, ultimately, both to Srebrenica and finally Dayton. Bell ruminates on how little the war registered in the West by that point, since there was now little access for television reporting (the Bosnian Army was not interested in advertising its new strength and capabilities, and the Bosnian Serbs were simply done with talking to the rest of the world, period) and also because Europe was, seemingly, bored with it.

The chapter ends with Bell recounting his pride at a piece he finished after three weeks work piecing together what information he could get and whatever images he could acquire, a piece he was proud of and felt passionate about, and which he felt conveyed some sense of the terror enfolding mostly offscreen. The piece was butchered, and only a few brief clips were played with in-studio voiceovers. Nobody was listening.

[Note: I have corrected this post, in which I originally referred to "Operation Storm" which would not actually occur until a few months later.]

"In Harm's Way" by Martin Bell [16]

Chapter 18: Arm Your Children

I had a difficult time figuring out how to summarize and review this chapter because at first I could not quite grasp what it is about. And then I realized--it is a brief summary of the post-Cold War world and what the Bosnian conflict signaled about its challenges, communicated through a brief synopsis of Bell's career from 1989 through the mid-1990s.

Bell, who had been assigned to BBC's North American beat for over a decade, was in 1989 reassigned to Berlin to cover the fall of Communism. He got to see a lot, but he also experienced the pressures of political correctness when he was discouraged from filming examples of nascent neo-Nazi groups in the former East Germany as Romanian Gypsies and other outsiders began pouring across the newly opened borders.

In Bosnia, he again faced the PC pressures to avoid words and images which might offend when he referred to mental patients trapped in the no-man's land between Muslims and Croats during the 1993 civil war by using the word "madhouse." One would think this was quite fitting--the patients were left to their own devices because they had been abandoned by the staff. But "madhouse" might offend, and we can't have that.

Bell also recounts how the longer he reported on Bosnia, the harder it became for him to to adjust during his periodic returns home, an experience shared by many. One person whom he sympathizes with in this regard is General Lewis MacKenzie, who adjusted (in his opinion) by throwing himself into civilian work after finding post-Bosnia military duties unfulfilling. This book was published in 1995, so we will forgive Bell for not being aware that MacKenzie would use his new position as a front for covert Serb nationalist proselytizing.

And so the chapter moves--quietly, patiently, and finally unexpectedly--into a rumination on the responsibilities of the international community--and the journalist--in the face of genocide. Bell is quietly convincing here, since he has taken pains not to be a crusading journalist or to engage in polemics, but he believes that journalists have an ethical and moral obligation as well as a professional one. Genocide has consequences. Lessons will be learned. It is the responsibility of the international community to take actions to ensure that those lessons are the right ones.

"In Harm's Way" by Martin Bell [15]

Chapter 16: Shading the Truth
Chapter 17: War Is a Bad Taste Business

These two chapters are both concerned with war reporting, the physical, ethical and moral risks involved in that endeavor, and with the dangers of self-censorship as well. Both chapters are well-written, deeply felt, astutely observed, and grapple with complex and difficult moral questions. They are not, however, directly concerned with the subject of this blog, so in the interests of keeping this review moving on I will only mention that my admiration for this book grows as I work through it, and leave it at that.

It's not that Bosnia does not figure in these chapters--while Chapter 16 largely goes back in time, to Bell's days reporting in Northern Ireland, Chapter 17 is entirely concerned with events in Bosnia. Rather, the main issue is not the war itself but rather the reporting of it, and some of the factors which affected that reporting. Specifically, how one central fact of war reporting--that it is dangerous and can get you killed--imposed a "bias" of sorts on the reports coming out of Bosnia. Chapter 17 concludes with this sobering statement:

"On the issue of our coverage of the Bosnian war the true charge against us is not that we misrepresented it by seeking out the horrors and ignoring the context; or that we somehow short-changed our public by telling them less than we knew. It is that for reasons of prudence we didn't know, and therefore didn't tell, the half of it."

Only six chapters and a short epilogue to go. There is already a candidate for my next review waiting.

"In Harm's Way" by Martin Bell [14]

Chapter 15: Of Men and Mandates

While the previous chapter raised a few troubling doubts about Bell's overall interpretation of the Bosnia crisis and the people involved in it, this chapter refutes those doubts in spades. You might disagree with some of Bell's individual judgments, but there can be little doubt that he grasped the big picture.

This chapter is largely Bell's recounting of the haphazard manner in which the United Nations stumbled into the unworkable "peacekeeping" mandate it found itself in; furthermore, he outlines the real-world implications of this confused mandate. The UN was keeping people from starving to death so that they could be murdered--Bell saw this clearly.

What he also saw was that many UN personnel were very conflicted about this, and more than a few were outraged. Some quite admirably did all they could to stretch their interpretation of the mandate as far as they could in order to save lives whenever possible. Bell's description of the UN in Bosnia as essentially a Red Cross with guns (which they were only allowed to use in self-defense) is a good one.

He also saw clearly that even as the quality and the moral courage of individual UN commanders made a difference within even a misguided mandate, so did the quality and professionalism of the soldiers. The Ukrainian contingent do not come out looking well in his account.

We also see General Michael Rose again, and the portrait this time is far less flattering than in the previous chapter; Bell tellingly refers to Rose's "supporters" in this chapter, and in context it is clear he is not one of them. Nor is he the man's enemy, but it is clear that he found Rose to be, the end of his first year in Bosnia, a deeply shaken man presiding over a failure of leadership and resolve, a far cry from the confident, decisive, can-do leader in the previous chapter. Rose has lost the plot, and failed to see the Bosnian Serb leadership for the murderous, bullying, untrustworthy thugs they were.

The chapter ends with a consideration of some lessons from the Bosnian experience of peacekeeping. Each of them is elaborated in more or less detail than I will quote here, but these few sentences will hopefully do his excellent arguments justice:

"First, a merely victim-based strategy doesn't work, and probably prolongs the war...

Second, humanitarianism conflicts with peacekeeping, and still more with peace-enforcement. The threat of force, if it is to be effective, will sooner or later involve the use of force...

Third, the credible use of force can yield results...This was the lesson of Bosnia, that force prevails...

Fourth, all threats will be tested; and if they are bluff they will be seen to be bluff...If you declare a safe area you have to make it safe...

Fifth, peacekeeping is a soldier-intensive business in which the quality of the troops matters as much as they quantity...

Finally, peacekeeping is not just soldiering under a different-coloured helmet."

Which concludes this chapter.

"In Harm's Way" by Martin Bell [13]

Chapter 14: Court Martial by Blue-Eyed Stare

Here we meet General Michael Rose, the British UN Commander in Bosnia of less-than-stellar reputation among certain circles (ahem). Bell holds Rose in much higher regard than I do, and to be honest he makes a case that I may need to revise my opinion. Bell was the reporter who passed along Rose's "intemperate" (to be very generous) comment that the Bosnian government army had deliberately collapsed its' defenses at Goradze in order to draw the UN and NATO into the war on their side.

Bell's version of events suggests that while Rose certainly meant what he said, he possibly did not mean to imply a larger shifting of blame for the war. Bell strongly implies that Rose knew that the Bosnian Serb leadership and the Belgrade regime were the primary movers of the conflict, and in this chapter at least there is no suggestion that Rose adopted a wider blame-the-victim interpretation of events based on his belief that the Bosnian government exaggerated the situation in Goradze in order to sway Western opinion. Nor does Bell apologize for the possible role the media might have played in such a scenario, although he certainly is aware of the theoretical dynamic which would have been in play.

There are also hints at the personal dynamics driving the lack of cooperation between the UN and NATO. Given that the UN ultimately failed to stop aggression in Bosnia, and that NATO airstrikes helped bring the war to an end, Rose's trademark brusqueness and intemperance seem much less charming than earlier in the chapter.

"In Harm's Way" by Martin Bell [10]

Chapter 9: Panorama-The Destination of Choice

Another highly enjoyable chapter about broadcasting; in this case, about Bell's stint with "Panorama", a "news-magazine" type show. More specifically, this chapter describes how Bell--a long-time newsman from the other side of the fence--came to be assigned to a piece on Bosnia for Panorama, as well as the context behind that move.

Good reading, but again only of relevance to this blog to the extent that it gets us to:

Chapter 10: Forcing the Peace

A synopsis of the content of that Panorama piece, along with the story of "the making of." I have not seen the piece itself yet, but apparently it was very influential and watched back in Britain, and it seems that Bell used the piece to call for some sort of action by the international community.

The chapter ends with Bell expounding on the notion that journalists have the obligation to do more than simply engage in "hand-wringing" over man-made tragedies such as Bosnia. Once again, Bell's fundamental decency and humanity comes through in this chapter.

"In Harm's Way" by Martin Bell [6]

Chapter 4: Homes from Home

This chapter--while somewhat longer than many, and not without interest, is of little direct relevance to this blog. This is essentially a slice of life for war reporters; a collection of colorful anecdotes about how Bell and his colleagues moved around looking for suitable places to set up base and from which to do their reporting. A comment about American reporter Kurt Schork, whom Bell clearly admired, is worthy of some notice:

"For Kurt the Bosnian war was and still is an epic struggle between good and evil. I meet more Serbs and see more shades of grey in it than he does, but I have never wavered in my admiration for him."

It should be noted that this comes after Bell has related the story of the first time he met Schork--at a press conference with Ratko Mladic, who physically assaulted Schork for having the temerity to ask him a direct question. Bell seems not to have considered that rather than coloring Schork's view towards "the Serbs", it may have educated him on the character of the specific leaders who were waging war against the Bosnian state. But Bell's admiration for the man seems genuine; rather than suspecting him of an implicit criticism, it is probably better to take him at his word and see why he think "knowing more Serbs" should have led him to doubt a "good versus evil" interpretation of the war he witnessed.

Otherwise, this is an enjoyable chapter, but we need to move on.

"In Harm's Way" by Martin Bell [4]

Chapter 2: Peacekeepers Accomplices

Bell was obviously quite impressed by his two new peacekeeper friends and allies, particularly General MacKenzie ("Lew"), whom Bell describes as a man of action ill-suited for the sort of desk work he was originally assigned to when sent to Bosnia on a UN peacekeeping mission just prior to the outbreak of war. The time for diplomacy having passed, MacKenzie was out in the field directing the work of humanitarian relief the best he could; the reader can guess that his subsequent experience negotiating with militias at roadblocks on behalf of beleaguered supply convoys might well have colored his experience in Bosnia.

Bell describes the war at this point as "unstoppable," a point I might wish to debate, then moves on to an anecdote which made quite an impression on him and I think it is safe to assume on his buddy "Lew." Namely, the violence surrounding the evacuation of the Serb forces under General Kukanjac from the barracks in Sarajevo as part of a deal to win the release of President Izetbegovic, who had been kidnapped at the airport by Serb forces.

It's a well-known story to anyone who followed the war; as is known, Bosnian Government forces carried out an ambush on the fleeing Serb soldiers in violation of the deal the UN (under MacKenzie) had brokered. Bell goes on to list the lessons about war reporting he gained from this experience.

Lesson number one--"stay with it." Bell missed the worst of the the ambush because he was away filing a story for a deadline. Enough said, for our purposes.

Lesson number two--"the department of preconceived notions was alive and well and living in distant newsrooms." In short, because up until now the news from Bosnia had been stories of Serbs slaughtering Muslims, Bell found himself in some difficulty explaining that this extremely bloody incident was an example of a large number of Serbs being killed by (mostly) Muslims. Bell felt this issue put the previously unambiguous conflict in a new light, since "Serbs can be victims too" as he told his superiors back in Britain. Yet the equivalence between what he saw in the Drina valley--unarmed civilians being driving by violence and terror from their homes--and this unfortunate incident--the ambush of soldiers who had been surrounded and trapped within government territory until the kidnapping of their President won the release of those enemy troops, cannot be taken too far. I don't wish to dismiss the lives of those Serb soldiers who were ambushed and killed; but the situation was rather unique and not at all a parallel to the systematic campaign of ethnic cleansing Bell had been witness to. While I admire his genuine feeling for the victims of war, his analysis here is superficial.

Lesson three--in peacekeeping, the press had a different relation with the military than in standard war reporting. Bell identified with the UN. "We wished it to succeed." The normal relationship between the press and the military--somewhat suspicious and cagey on both sides, as the military wished to keep its cards close to its vest while the press sought to pry out information from sources it assumed were not being fully forthcoming with them--didn't exist in Bosnia. The UN was transparent and generally knew less about the situation on the ground than the press did, especially because of the constant rotation of officers.

So a relationship evolved, one involving the flow of information between the press and the UN (later the IFOR). Bell is upfront about this--while some might have felt this was unethical or unprofessional, he wanted to serve the cause of peace. And, he states, "to help the UN was to serve the cause of peace."

And so it ends, with Bell fantasizing about someday telling his grandchildren--who, hearing that journalists often used their profession as a cover for espionage, ask him if he was ever a spy--that "actually I was. Just once, I spied for peace."

Bell's motives seem decent. Yet there are unspoken assumptions at the heart of this chapter which he does not address. The press wanted the UN to "succeed"; but at what? And, Bell assures us that "to help the UN was to serve the cause of peace." That sounds noble and high-minded. But in Bosnia, was this true?

"In Harm's Way" by Martin Bell [2]

Chapter 1: Marching as to War

This is a short post; sorry, but it's "pre-Bosnia" so hopefully that's OK.

This chapter describes Bell's experiences with the military; first, his National Service with the Sussex Regiment as a young man; and then as a war reporter, specifically focusing on his stint as a BBC reporter with British troops in the first Persian Gulf War. This chapter is amusing and entertaining, and Bell comes off as charmingly self-effacing and possessed of that dry, understated wit we Yanks assume is indoctrinated into our British cousins from birth. This chapter not only introduces the reader to Bell as a person, but also provides some context to how he approaches the job of war reporter and how he acquired the skills and knowledge necessary to survive and prosper at the craft.

So far, so good...

"In Harm's Way" by Martin Bell [1]

So, on to another book review. This one, subtitled "Reflections of a War-Zone Thug", is an account of BBC reporter Martin Bell's experiences covering the Bosnian war; as such, it is not a strict history of the war, nor is it an impassioned work of advocacy such as David Rieff's Slaughterhouse: Bosnia and the Failure of the West. This is an account of war reporting as much as it is an account of an actual, specific war. Still, Bell was one of the more visible and respected broadcast journalists covering Bosnia, so his interpretation of events will be of some interest to anyone wishing to understand how the Western media filtered events for consumption back home.

It should be noted that Bell, whatever else I will say about him, was obviously moved and deeply affected by what he saw in Bosnia. The Prologue explains that this is "my first and probably my only book." He needed to write about his experiences in Bosnia, a need he had never felt or at least never pursued before. He freely admits that this book may be difficult to catalog, noting with amusement that booksellers "didn't know whether to classify In Harm's Way as Biography, Politics, Military, or Journalism. One of them even tried Travel."

We will see if his views on Bosnia are easier to categorize.